CVSS Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:L
Lifecycle Timeline
3Description
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Adnan Haque (a11n) Virtual Moderator allows Cross-Site Scripting (XSS). This issue affects Virtual Moderator: from n/a through 1.4.
Analysis
CVE-2025-52772 is a CSRF vulnerability in Adnan Haque's Virtual Moderator plugin (versions through 1.4) that enables Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. An unauthenticated attacker can exploit this via a malicious webpage to perform unauthorized actions and inject malicious scripts, potentially compromising user sessions and data. With a CVSS score of 7.1 and network-accessible attack vector requiring only user interaction, this vulnerability poses a moderate-to-significant risk to affected installations, though exploitation requires social engineering to trick users into visiting attacker-controlled sites.
Technical Context
The vulnerability exists in the Virtual Moderator plugin (CPE: likely a11n/Virtual Moderator or similar WordPress/web plugin identifier). The root cause is CWE-352 (Cross-Site Request Forgery), which allows attackers to forge requests from authenticated users without their knowledge. The vulnerability is compounded by a secondary XSS impact, suggesting insufficient input validation and CSRF token verification. The plugin likely lacks proper nonce validation and sanitization of user inputs, allowing attackers to chain CSRF attacks with XSS payloads. This is typical in web plugins where state-changing operations (moderation actions, settings changes) are protected by insufficient anti-CSRF mechanisms and output encoding is inadequate.
Affected Products
Virtual Moderator by Adnan Haque (a11n) (through 1.4 (inclusive))
Remediation
Upgrade Virtual Moderator to version 1.5 or later (assumed; verify with plugin repository); priority: Immediate Workaround: Disable the Virtual Moderator plugin if version 1.4 or earlier and patch is unavailable; use alternative moderation solutions Mitigation: Implement Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules to detect and block CSRF token manipulation and XSS payloads targeting moderation endpoints Mitigation: Enforce Content Security Policy (CSP) headers to restrict script execution and form submissions Mitigation: Audit user roles and permissions; limit moderation privileges to trusted administrators only Developer Fix: Implement WordPress nonce verification (wp_verify_nonce) on all state-changing operations; sanitize and escape all user inputs; validate referrer headers
Priority Score
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External POC / Exploit Code
Leaving vuln.today
EUVD-2025-28458